


staycation

by EKmisao



Series: stories from the end [4]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Game Spoilers, Spoilers, special episode spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 11:04:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9120859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EKmisao/pseuds/EKmisao
Summary: (spoiler warning for extended ending and Christmas DLC) Because not all Christmas dates need to be outside.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (SPOILER for the extended ending and the Christmas DLC, fair warning.) 
> 
> When the Christmas DLC came out, I already had good-end completion and special episode completion. So the DLC felt...odd. But it did give out good backstory and character information. I guess this combines what we found out in the DLC, but also factors in that thing s have ended and changed. Thank you for reading.

[THE SPOILER WARNING IS REPEATED.]  
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He's not getting out of bed, all day today. I suspect he'll be the same tomorrow. It's awful that I know why, because I feel exactly the same way. If this surveillance work didn't keep me up, I'd also want to sleep through the 24th and 25th and wake up to the 26th. 

It’s always been like that since we were little. I do not have Yoosung’s kind stifling family, Jumin’s rich stiff messy family with a strangely loving dad, Jaehee’s second family, nor Zen’s distant family. 

There is no family. Not for me and Saeran. When there was family, there were no gifts and food and smiles. Just shouts and beatings and bruises. Where there no longer was family, there was just strangers, and distant countries, and loneliness, and school and work, and…and…being used. 

So he and I would rather forget Christmas exists. 

A call. 

"Vanderwood...no, Mary, don't you have a date?" I try my best at a happy voice, while staring at the scrolling code and the moving bar of a completing upload. 

"Hmph," she says. "Most of my friends have work today. The ones I'm interested in all have dates. Hello to you, too, Mr. Scrooge." 

"I can be your date.” I am pretty sure it came out flat. 

"No, thanks, you two-timer. What will your girlfriend say?" She chuckles slightly. 

The upload bar completed. “Don’t worry about me, Vanderwood,” I tell her. “I’ve sent the source codes and the new antivirus codes. You can check. Go hang out with your friends tonight, after their work is through. I’ll be fine.” 

"Luciel." 

"Ya?” 

"You have your brother now." 

"Ya." 

"You even have a girlfriend now." 

"Ya." 

"Why are you still like this?" 

"What?" 

"You deserve to be happier, this year, old friend.” 

"I don't deserve anything, handler." 

I drop the call. 

I stare again at the monitor. 

My brother back. A love to protect. Work I do not need to fear my life about anymore, more or less. Friends who put up with my craziness. 

I do not deserve anything that happened this year. 

I let my head meet the desk as i sigh. I want these days to be gone. 

Another call. 

It’s her. 

“The alien Seven Zero Seven has gone out to space and may not be available until after the earthling holiday,” I tell her. “Please leave a message and he will respond once the spaceship has returned to earth…” 

“Seven. Please come to the door.” 

“Huh?” 

“I confirm that this is me, even if you run it through the voice recognition,” she says. “Sorry for not knowing any Arabic…” 

My head is still over the desk. I want her to go away. I don’t want her to see me like this. “Beeeeep! Sorry, all space circuits are busy now, please try your call again later…” 

“Seven. Please. I’m at the door. Please let me in.” 

I place my hands over my head. “I’m sorry,” I tell her plainly. “But not today.” 

“I…have…bungeoppang.” 

My head lifted from the table. Okay, she got my attention. She has goldfish-shaped waffle pastry. “That’s impossible,” I reply. 

“Red bean,” she croons. “And red bean with ice cream.” 

“You are lying.” With so many people out on the streets on a cold day, bungeoppang run out quickly. Those ice cream fish are easier to find, but the red bean variants also run out fast. I’ve learned that the hard way, so now I don’t bother to find them at all during these days. Just another reason not to go out. 

She asks in a cheerful tune, “Want to see for yourself?” 

Yes, I do…but…I still do not want her to see me like this. 

She drops the tune. “Seven. It’s okay. I promise.” 

Do not think that I haven’t noticed: she hasn’t called me by my true name yet. I’m not sure what she knows or how much. I forget how much I’ve dropped at the chatroom. I’m sure I haven’t told her much personally. But clearly she is trying not to bring up my past, trying to keep me in the present. 

“I look like a mess. I AM a mess.” 

“That’s okay. I just want to see you.” 

I let out a deep sigh. She has bungeoppang. It probably is not so bad to let her in. I check the CCTV and haul my tired, messed-up self to the door. 

I unlock it myself, and find her smiling, and holding several shopping bags. She holds out a paper bag full of the waffle fish. 

I sigh again. “You shouldn’t be here. You have other people to be with.” Mother. Father. Family. 

“I’ve made arrangements, don’t worry,” she tells me. 

“If you say so,” I say, too tired to keep it up. 

We open the shopping bags on what passes as a kitchen counter in my apartment. 

I chuckle in spite of myself. A full bag of bungeoppang. Another filled with the ice cream-type fish, which we shove into the freezer. There is another bag with packets of Japanese instant ramen. 

“You don’t seem to like ramyeon or jjampong?” she says. 

I smile a bit. She may be right, I just never bothered to know why. 

She opened a backpack as well, and brought out a DVD case. She smiles hopefully at me as I look at the compiled episodes of Masterchef season 5. I’ve seen them all before, but I don’t deserve to relive that today, so I shake my head. 

She raises another DVD, this time of the director’s cut for The Hobbit. I had no big opinions about LOTR either way, and I did not feel up to that either. I shake my head no. She tried showing me movies from both Star Wars and Star Trek, the newest Ip Man installment…I don’t even recognize the anime movie she showed. I just said no to them all. 

I’ve seen them all, while waiting for downloads, or finishing up mindless coding. That was not the problem. I just felt too tired to watch anything that had a plot, especially when my life had none. 

“Just ramen, then?” she asks. 

I reach out for one of the waffle fish. I give her a sad smile. “Just ramen.” 

“Okay.” 

I munch on the bungeoppang while she boils the water and opens the packets. I watch her move around quietly, not keeping up a conversation, just turning around once in a while, seeing me gut a waffle fish of its red bean innards. 

It takes me a few more minutes of sinking in that she is here, that she is cooking instant ramen, before I remember. And I stand up, still holding the waffle fish. 

“Is something wrong?” she asks. 

I shake my head as I head down the hall. 

I knock at my bedroom door. “Saeran? We have noodles.” He had not been out of my room the whole day, not even to eat. There is no way to get chips from just inside my room. I knock a little longer and a little harder. “Saeran? At least have something to eat?” 

“Get lost,” he grumbles from inside. 

“It’s ramen, you know. Japanese. From the Japan store?” 

“Go. Away. Hyung!” 

I sigh. I gave it a try. “Ah, well. Just come out later, okay?” 

He grumbles a little less angrily: “Fine! In a bit.” 

I do not blame him. The holidays were worse on him. I managed to slip out, buy us a waffle fish or two. He was chained down, beaten in many places for crying, for asking why we were not let out, why we did not get gifts like every other child. The best I could do was bring home waffle fish, while hearing all the caroling at the church and on the streets. 

I return to the kitchen, and find two bowls on the small table, both filled with curly noodles. One of the bowls was beside my set of waffle fish, while one bowl waited in front of her. 

I smile a bit as I sit down again. She gestures for me to start. 

I look down at the bowl and take up a bunch of noodles. They’re warm and salty and not-spicy. They remind me of college, when sometimes it was hard to get Korean things in American cities, so any kind of instant noodles was better than nothing. They remind me of being swamped in work while in this country, finishing stuff for Vanderwood and for other freelance clients. This is the nearer past, the present timeline. 

“Are the noodles okay?” she asks. “They’re not soggy or undercooked?” 

I shake my head. 

“I’m glad.” 

Then she keeps the silence of the kitchen, while we sit together and quietly eat instant ramen, stealing glances, hoping we each did not look silly while slurping. 

She breaks the silence as I reach the bottom of the bowl. “If it’s okay,” she says, “I have something for you?” 

Me? Someone has a gift for me? “What is it?” 

From the backpack, she takes out a small package, gift wrapped in store wrapper. 

Gifts do not happen to me. They are things that I buy for myself, for a job well done. But they never come to me for free. I keep staring at the package, like it was an alien life form. 

“Is it a bad time?” she asks. 

“It’s not that,” I swear. “It’s just…I did not make you buy anything for me.” 

“You didn’t,” she said. “It’s a gift. To you. Like your robot cat for me. Is that okay?” 

Of course, it is. I just…did not know what to do. 

“Well? Just see if you like it?” 

“I’m supposed to open it?” I confirm. 

She nods. 

I finally take the package from her. 

After some tearing up and peeling open, I find myself the owner of a new red button-down dress shirt. One of those Oxfords. Nice enough for project proposals and…the occasional date. “I…do not…deserve this…” 

“It’s a gift,” she says again. “Just say, ‘Okay’.” 

“Okay,” I repeat. “…Thank you.” 

She sighs and smiles in relief as Saeran walks in. 

He stalks through the kitchen. He finds the ramen she left in the pot, scoops all the remaining noodles into a bowl. He walks to the table and sits beside me. 

“So. She’s here,” he says. 

She smiles shyly at him. Understandably she is still a bit cautious around Saeran, but she never hated him, something I am grateful for. “There’s bungeoppang,” she coaxes. 

He smirks. “Red bean?” 

“Yes,” we both say. 

“Not interested,” he says. “You got Binggraes?” 

“Yes,” we also both say, pointing to the freezer. 

“Okay,” he says, walking to the refrigerator, and getting out an ice-cream-type waffle fish. 

He then returns to sit beside me, to noisily slurp down his bowl of ramen. 

At least he’s eating something, and something decent. I’ll worry about making him eat breakfast, but we can worry tomorrow. 

“I have a gift for you,” she says to Saeran, midway into the noodles. 

He snorts and smirks. “Who asked you to be nice to me, just because you’re nice to my brother?” 

“No one,” she answers, presenting a similar package with store wrapper. 

“We’re not a charity case,” he scowls. “You feel sorry for me, I get a thing for this over-commercialised season. Is that it?” 

“No,” she answers. “Yes it’s about this season, but it’s okay if you don’t think so. I don’t care if you think it’s a pre-new year gift.” 

“We are NOT a charity case!” He pounds the table. 

She jumps, as I pull Saeran back. 

But she also speaks: “I only think you should receive kindness, especially during this season. That is all. You are Saeyoung’s brother, and thus you are also, hopefully, my friend, if you’ll have me.” 

He stares at her for a long moment, staring as well at the noodles and the waffle fish on the table. Then he snatches the package from her, as he mutters and grumbles. “Thanks for the noodles,” he mutters as he grabs up the ice cream fish and heads back to my room. He slams the door behind him. 

I shrug. “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” she tells me. 

“It’s not, but thanks for understanding,” I tell her, as I take up her hand. 

I lead her to the couch, and sit her there in front of empty soda cans, empty potato chips bags, and beside an empty life. 

I just hold on to her, wrapping my arms around her waist, leaning on her shoulder. I closed my eyes, keeping the certainty of her over my chest. 

“Thank you,” I say. 

I weave my fingers around hers, and clasp her hand firmly. 

I do not want her to go away. I do not want her to disappear from my life, like so many things that have already come and gone. I do not want to let go. 

She holds me in turn, anchoring me here. 

It’s not much, but it is a lot to me. 

My eyes stay closed, as i drift into dreams I never thought I would be allowed to dream, as I keep firmly holding her hand. 

“Tomorrow, we’ll go outside,” I tell her in my dreams. “We’ll go walk in the food district and buy things that aren’t instant noodles. Then maybe we’ll go watch a movie. Then maybe we’ll drive out and just see the city from the hills. I don’t know. I just want to make you happy, after everything you did today.” 

She squeezes my hand. 

“Maybe the holidays will start being different now. Because there are new memory files to make. Maybe. Maybe.” 

She lets me hold her. She lets me stay. 

It is not much. But it is a lot to me.


End file.
